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tv   PBS News Hour  PBS  April 19, 2013 3:00pm-4:01pm PDT

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captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> brown: a major american city, under lockdown today, as a massive manhunt continues in the aftermath of the boston marathon bombings with a police officer and one of two brothers being sought confirmed dead. good evening, i'm jeffrey brown. >> suarez: and i'm ray suarez. on the "newshour" tonight, we detail the violent chase to bring the suspects to justice, as swat teams cordon off wide swaths of the city and surrounding towns to capture 19-year-old dzokhar tsarnaev. >> brown: we explore what's known so far about the brothers suspected in the deadly attack. >> suarez: we examine how investigators are trying to figure out whether the brothers acted alone or were part of a larger terrorist organization. >> brown: and we look at how technology allowed police and thpu t
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>> suarez: plus, we get the perspective of mark shields and david brooks on terror's return to u.s. soil and the rest of the week's news. nighrown: that's all ahead on s "newshour." >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> support also comes from carnegie corporation of new york, a foundation created to do what andrew carnegie called "real and permanent good." celebrating 100 years of philanthropy at carnegie.org. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... and friends of the newshour. >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.
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>> brown: it's been an extraordinary scene and it continues, as boston spent the day locked down by a manhunt for the second brother authorities believe was involved in this week's marathon bombing. that's come after a violent confrontation overnight that left the other bombing suspect and a police officer dead. kwame holman begins our multi- part look at today's evolving story. >> reporter: 19-year-old dzokhar tsarnaev escaped the early morning gun battle in suburban boston that killed his 26-year- old brother tamarlen. that set into motion an unprecedented manhunt as a small army of local, state and federal officers fanned out through boston and its suburbs. the city was brought to a near standstill. were urged to shelter in their homes. schools and mass transit were closed; amtrak service was shut down into the city. massachusetts governor deval patrick spoke at 8:00 am.
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>> there is a massive manhunt under way. a lot of law enforcement involved in that. to assist that we have suspended all service on the m.b.t.a., our public transit service, and this will continue until we think it's safe to open all or some of that. we're asking people to shelter in place-- in other words to stay indoors with their doors locked and not to open the door for anyone other than a properly identified law enforcement officer. and that applies here in watertown where we are right now. id walham, newton, belmont and, at this point, all of boston. all of boston. this is a serious situation. we're taking it seriously. we're asking the public to take it seriously as well and to assist law enforcement by following these simple instructions.
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we've got every asset that we can possibly muster on the ground right now. they are doing a terrific job and working in concert with each other but we are going to need the public to help us help them stay safe. >> reporter: in washington, the president convened a briefing in the white house situation room with almost a dozen top aides. the search focused on watertown, massachusetts, just west of downtown boston. the string of events began yesterday afternoon when fbi agents showed images of two then unnamed suspects, pictured at monday's bombing, and called them armed and dangerous. a harrowing night then began a short distance from the site of monday's bombings. just before 10:30, a security camera apparently captured reported on the campus of m.i.t., in cambridge. authorities say a campus police officer, 26-year-old sean collier, was shot and killed by the two suspects. the tsarnaevs then car-jacked a mercedes s.u.v. elsewhere in cambridge police say. the two men took the driver to
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three a.t.m.s machines until they got cash before releasing him. police pursued the s.u.v. into watertown. that's where heavy gunfire and explosions were heard, captured on smartphone video. >> i heard a loud boom and then a rad succession of pop, pop, pop. it sounded like automatic weapons. and then i heard the second explosion. and then there was the smell of something burning in the air. we were still going toward it and then residents from the window shouted, "hey, it's gunfire. don't go that way." >> reporter: superintendent timothy alben of the massachusetts state police: >> the pursuit went into a residential neighborhood not far from here, where there was an exchange of gunfire between watertown police, m.b.t.a. police officer and suspects in that s.u.v. during the course of that pursuit, several explosive devices were discharged from
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that car at the police officers. in the exchange of the gunfire we believe that one of the timately taken intstody. a second suspect was able to flee from that car, and there is an active search going on at this time. >> reporter: police shot tamerlan tsarnaev. he was pronounced dead a short time later at an area hospital. >> this was a trauma arrest. multiple injuries, probably we believe a combination of blasts, potentially gunshot wounds. >> how many gunshot wounds? >> unable to count. >> multiple gunshots? >> yes. >> i'm sorry i didn't hear the rest of that. >> and probably a blast injury also. >> blast meaning what? >> an explosive device, possibly shrapnel, a thermal injury. >> can you describe where it was? >> it was pretty much throughout the trunk, it was multiple wounds. >> would it be consistent with perhaps a bomb strapped chest, would it be consistent with that? >> unclear. i think the medical examiner will be able to conclusively say that, but there were signs of
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more than just gunshot wounds. >> reporter: the brothers were of chechen heritage and came to the u.s. around ten years ago. a circuitous path took them through dagestan, a volatile region in southern russia. 26-year-old tamerlan reportedly was a hip-hop fan, and a gold gloves boxer. in an online spread of photos that showed him boxing, he was quoted saying, "i don't have a single american friend, i don't understand them." nevertheless he was said to have hopes of securing a u.s. olympic team berth. the younger dzokhar graduated from the prestigious cambridge rindge and latin school two years ago and was enrolled at university of massachusetts at dartmouth. he became a naturalized american citizen last yea septeer 11th accoro sedi tnews organizations. a high school acquaintance spoke to reporters. >> i don't know what happened, not sure what set him off like this. i didn't meet his brother. i am really caught off-guard by
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this. >> reporter: another high school friend talked to abc news. >> my school is very diverse, he didn't really talk with an accent, he was pretty american, i guess. he had a lot of friends, relatively well-known. >> reporter: on a russian social networking site dzokhar tsarnaev's worldview was listed as islam and he'd apparently linked to islamic and other websites calling for chechen independence. late this morning, an uncle of the brothers spoke to repos from h htsid washington. ruslan tsarni said he had not seen either man in years. >> i've been following it from day one but never ever would imagine that somehow the children of my brother would be associated with that. so it is atrocity.
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we're devastated. we're shocked. again i don't know, this family does not know how to share that grief with the real victims. >> reporter: tsarni said the family was muslim, and ethnic chechens. he was unaware what, if any, military training the men had, or what led them to allegedly commit the crimes. >> if that happened, most likely, somebody radicalized them. but it's notbr who just movedto rsia, who spent his lingin bread to their table, fixing cars, fixing cars. i say dzokhar if you are alive, turn yourself in. and ask for forgiveness! from the victims, from the injured, and those who left. ask forgiveness from these people. we're not requiring forgiveness in this family.
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he put a shame... he put a shame on the... on our family, on the tsarnaev family. he put a shame in entire chechin ethnicity. because everyone now names a play with word chechen. so they put that shame on the entire ethnicity. so that's what i would say-- turn yourself in. and whatever one, i mean, put tion oe who here. >> reporter: the men's aunt, maret tsarnaev had a different take: she spoke to reporters in toronto. >> my first call to fbi they couldn't have done this. where are the evidence. all your showing is the footage. two guys are walking and i found it strange. tevarlan is walking in the front, djokhar is walking in the back, why wouldn't they come together? you know just together, as brothers as i used to know them. >> reporter: the men's father, who lives in russia, told the associated press that his son
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dzokhar "was a true angel. he is such an intelligent boy. we expected him to come on holidays here." >> suarez: massachusetts governor patrick and mayor tom menino and watertowne chief edward devoe briefed e media a short time ago. the suspect has not been apprehended yet. here's an excerpt. >> we do not have an apprehension of our suspect this afternoon, but we will have one. we're committed to that. i want the neighborhood here in watertown to know that we went through about 20 streets here door to door with our tactical teams. we knocked on doors to ensure that everyone was safe in their homes and that they saw the police on their streets. we did limited searches of those homes to render them safe. we've also followed a number of leads this afternoon that have taken us in various places in eastern massachusetts and none of those leads have been
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fruitful to this point. there's much less to be done including ballistics and forensic work that will be concluded in boston in the next fey we also have a scene up here -- a forensics scene where we had some exploded and unexploded ordnance there that were made safe and removed during the course of the afternoon. that is still on going but should be completed shortly. we are going draw back our tactical teams but the state police will be providing additional patrols to the town of watertown over the next about two to three days for the neighborhoods and the citizens of this community we're going to have for the chief an additional ten state police patrols augmenting the watertown police in those neighborhoods the, three shifts a day probably through monday. so, again, i want to emphasize this is a complicated investigation that's being led
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by the f.b.i. our presence here today is about the safety of the people in the community. we're confident that we did that to the best of our ability. unfortunately, we don't have a positive result at this point. but for the same of everyone that were hurt or killed during the marathon or those police officers that lost their life or were seriously injured, we are committed to seeing a conclusion to this case. thank you. for morem bost about the at we'rarning about the suspects' lives ere, we turn to two journalists who have been out anout toy.rah ston globe" and oncai boeri of wbur public radio farah, just a short time ago the shelter in place order was lifted and mass transit is going to start moving again. but you have to move across boston to get to this camera to
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talk to us. what was it like in the city? >> people were starting to move around a bit. there were a few cars on the road. but the streets are very empty. i happen to live a block away from the suspects and so i was woken up this morning with people calling me saying "hey, there's something going on on norfolk street." and as i walked down there cops wave med down and said "you have to go back inside." so it's been -- a lot of people have been staying at home. >> suarez: david, it is one of the largestropo mettan areas in the country. it must have been odd to see it serted on a da >> more than odd. what you're seeing here today-- as harrowing as this situation is, the fact that there are people running around with bombs and shooting at police-- 87 square miles of this metropolitan area were shut down locked down today. i did the math. boston and four towns. all mass transit was shut down. the colleges we shu
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amak was shut down. even the train engineers were told to leave the buildings. it is -- what we're seeing is really an example, probably a prime example, of the post-9/11 security state. and when you see the vehicles downtown, armored cars, tanks, when i started in this business, when you had a bad situation it involved state troopers with shotguns, tear gas and maybe shields. youn see armorederent. car out there today with a sign on it saying "cape cod swat team." all this equipment bought in the post-9/11 era. >> suarez: david, has law enforcement at any level confirmed what it is they're looking for behind those barricades in watertown? can they talk at all about who it is, what it is they think they're going to find? >> well, they started this morning thinking that they were going to find dzhokhar dzhokhar
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was in that area, they thought, they were sure that they had him in that area and now they've been compressing in and yet there's some doubt now as to whether or not he's there. >> suarez: farah, you mentioned you lived right near where the suspects did. when you were poking around and reporting today talking to people in the area, what did they tell you about the brothers a nigh yef. >> well, the family came in 2002. the so dzhokhar was nine years old, his brother was 16. the father used to make money selling cars so he was often seen outside the house fixing up old cars and selling them. but a lot of the crowd that was being evacuated. all the neighbors being evacuated. i think a woman with a baby was taken out of the apartment as
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well. as people were milling around i got to talk to the classmates of dzhokar and everybody at that time talked about a nial a kid who isopular, who went to -- he was a good wrestler. and it's just an amazing juxtaposition of this kid and especially -- i spent the afternoon on his twitter account and it's like walking around in a suspect's brain and you get to read okay two weeks ago he's talking about eating a cheeseburger at mcdonald's and you're like this is the kid that shut down the city of boston? it was extremely extraordinary and you see the things that he was tweeting, especially on marathon day, it was just eerie. >> suarez: farah, in a lot of immigrant families it's often the case that people who come when they're younger have an easier time assimilating to
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american life people come when they're older sometimes have a tougher time bo i language and with tting . was that the case in the tsarnaev family? >> i definitely got the clear picture that the brother was the instigateor. this is going to be my hunch. the brother was 16 when he came and shortly after he came he was interviewed because he won a boxing championship and at that time he said "i love america" or maybe he said "i like america because there are jobs here and there were no jobs in russia." and -- but overtime clearly he developed an anti-american attitude and you can sort of see some of that rubbing off on his brother in some of the comments that he made on his twitter feed page. but i bet we're going to see a story of a radicalized brother that basically dragged his kid brother down. you think of how people hold their older brother up as a hero and follow them, follow in their
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footsteps. i really bet that's what we're going to find in this case. >> suarez: david, a lot of attention has been paid to that quote from tamerlan about not having any american friends. but i think the process of glopl on to that people glossed over some of the other signs of a guy who liked being here. was sharply dressed and talking on a cell phone in a photo essay that was published online and in a local college magazine of having a girlfriend who is converting to islam for him which he thought was great. of smiling and accepting a very prestigious boxing trophy. t athis was nobody. you>> ray i go on to the site ofrs you'll see kidsith thousands of friends and you'll hear that complaint "i don't have any friends. sqots that's common. in fact, they were well-dressed, they seemed to be prospering in some ways. the family is described -- the lirents are described as
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s, traditional. the women in that household wore the he jab and tamerlan himself had a traditional full-length beard until he cut it several months ago but there was this hijab certain exuberance and it was especially seen in dzhokhar. one of his teachers said "this kid had a heart of gold." and if you look at his yearbook picture you see this -- you see this smiling face, it could be a poster kid of the american miant su story. which makes it all the more shocking to his teacher larry aaronson, with whom i was speaking today, that has larry as thinking, gee, the i.e.d.s are coming home, the war is coming to us. s.u.d.blely he has this sickening realization that it's this kid that he admires so much that might be at the center of it. >> suarez: are we clear on whether he was actively enrolled and in classes at this branch of the university of massachusetts, david?>>s
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fact, a student at the university of massachusetts at dartmouth which is on the south shore here and people have gone out there and talked to students who knew him there he was seen, though -- and he seemed to be living there but as late as wednesday one of the neighbors told me he was still in cambridge on norfolk street and another one who has an auto body shop said that, in fact, dzhokhar had come to him with a car, his girlfriend's mercedes several weeks ago and wanted it repaired and he came on tuesday and he wanted it back and the auto body mechanic said "it's not ready." and the auto body mechanic said that dzhokhar was nervous and insisted on having the car. but to think that he was there as late as wednesday night is an interesting investigative picture as well. >> suarez: well, i'm sure we'll continue to fill in the picture of these two young men's lives. david boeri of wbur.
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farah stockman of the "boston globe," thank you both. >> you're welcome. >> thank you. >> brown: now to some of the leads being pursued in the investigation of the attack. i'm joined by "new york times" reporter michael schmidt. mark hosenball of reuters and bruce hoffman, director of the center for security studies at georgetown university. making schmidt, you've been watching what the f.b.i. is up to. we heard a bit about the two brothers. what are investigators most focused on now to fill in the picture? >> they're really just, you know, in a basic game just trying to find this guy and trying to exploit all the different tools and techniques that they have through the interviews that they've been conducting today and particularly through the information provided by the man who was in that car that was hijacked. he's the only person that we oft
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contact with the suspect in recent days, that's talked to the authorities. and they're trying to exploit all that information for whatever clues may be there in the hopes of trying to find out where the suspect may be. >> b arehere any particular leads at this point that you're following that are of particular interest to them? >> no, there are different things about whether the suspect may have been heading towards new york or the suspect may have been heading towards connecticut or he was in a car. but we -- they haven't taken those any further. and they're just still looking for leads and trying to scour eastern massachusetts as much as possible in the hopes of findsing something. but i think they're pretty stumped right now. >> brown: mark hosenball, what do you think the clues might be that investigators are looking at here or abroad? >> well, what i've been looking at is who are these guys? what are their connections? why did they do it? from the sounds of things, you
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know, everybody wants to know what the motivation is. the authorities do seem to think they are some kind of islamic militants. but then the question is do they have confederates orpl ei ita abroad. if they have confederates in the united states that raises the question of who are these confederates? have they gone underground? could they commit further attacks from hidden lairs? as i understand at the moment investigators believe that, in fact, this is not an al qaeda operation. it's not clear how these guys became radicalize bud they don't seem to think that they have any significant overseas connections and they don't seem to think, as i think you quoted somebody there earlier, that they have any accomplices in the united states. so from the sounds of things they're a couple of what they call in the trade "loan wolves" who dreamt this all up on their own. who probably radicalized themselves perhaps over internet who may have even gotten the internet and such peopleecsethe
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they don't do the kinds of things that would attract the attention of intelligence agencies they're very hard to spot in advance. >> brown: bruce hoffman, what do you think they should be looking at now? what is the interesting part here? >> first and foremost the authorities will be combing through the computers to find out if they were in contact with anyone either in the united statesor overseas. if they were downloading for instance the sermons of anwar al-awlaki who's one of the deceased leaders of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, he's had a role in the radicalization of many westerners and also looking for any foreign travel. >> brown: with great caution here, because there's so much we don't know, but the twobrhe are ethnic chechens. that's an area, bruce hoffman, that has been rife with a lot of turmoil but we don't have any particular evidence that links them to that, right? >> no, not necessarily, we don't. there's been, i think, two interesting data points-- and that's all they are, perhaps
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coincidental, perhaps not-- but over the past eight month there is's been arrests in late february in france of three chechens charged with plotting terrorist attacks in spain and last august the dagestanny, chechen and turk plotting astacks in spain against british and american targets. there may be a link, it may be coincidence, but it could be that. movements are turning more to non-arab muslims to recruit and carry out terrorist operations. is. >> brown: michael schmidt, have you heard anything that connects anything on the chechen angle? is that something that's being tively pursued at small >> yes, it's something they're very focused on. they're very focused on whether there's a nexus abroad. whether it's coming from there or elsewhere, whether there were militants in pakistan or elsewhere in the middle east that may have helped spurn these individuals to do what they did. but at this point i -- similarly to how they're having trouble
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finding the suspect i think they're also having trouble figuring out has caused them do this. but at the same time we have to realize this incident happened on monday and we are just a few days after it and it may be weeks if not months until we find out what led them to do this so i think there's a bit of patience that we all have to have as much as we all are anxiously trying to get to the bottom of it. >> brown: m hosba, what would you add to that? specifically where they're >> well, again, they're looking at all these places. one of the other things they're looking at as well is whether the u.s. government -- what the u.s. government knew about these guys, if anything, before this event happened. in the past -- for example, the case of the guy who tried to attack on christmas day in 2009 with the bomb in his underwear it turned out that that guy's father a month earlier had been to the u.s. embassy in nigeria and warned them his son was
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hanging around with very bad people. the u.s. embassy sent a cable to the state department, the c.i.a. guys there sent a cable to the c.i.a. saying this is a very weird story about this guy but nobody seems to have paid much astongs even though they have evidence of perhaps that guy, the umar farouk abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber off a plane they never used it. now they're going back here with these guys to see what they might have known or not known about these guys. it's not clear what they did or didn't know. they had immigration following them. but do they have other information that were clues that were overlookd? that's one of the things we're looking at. we don't know what they got, if anything. >> brown: bruce hoffman, who were they talking to? how does one pursue all these leads and what kind of resources does the american government have to marshal to pursue them? >> again, certainly any communication on the computer will be enormously important and y have had traveled abroad, who
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where he may have gone and who he would have met with. but it all bips down where and how were these individuals radicalized and were there connections? we haven't heard much of the third suspect taken into custody this morning. that may be an enormous link to this as well. >> brown: or not. >> or not. precisely. >> brown: the lone wolf type i think we heard referred to earlier, that has to be -- that's part of the pursuit as well to see who they are and how they might have gotten. >> president pattern of this type of terrorism has gone one way or the other. it has turned out to be general lone wolves, autodidacts in bomb making and weaponry, self-radicalized but all this sounds remarkably like thesitu ion and scenario after the ly, 2005 bombings. relatives spoke of the bombers the same way earlier. reporters described their process of radicalization as
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being something that was more isolated than it turned out to be so as mike cautioned it's just too soon to know. the. >> brown: bruce hoffman, mark hosenball and michael schmidt, thank you all very much. >> suarez: we've also learned some more information in just the last few minutes: governor deval patrick said 200 rounds and explosives were used in the late night firefight. authorities said they believe tasranev escaped on foot. we now examine the sophisticated tools law enforcement used to find the suspects, and how technology allowed crowdsourcing to become part of this major investigation.we are joined by d falkenrath of the chertoff group. he's aordeputyan security adviser and special assistant to president bush. he is also a contributing editor at bloomberg tv. and will oremus, a staff writer for slate and lead blogger for "future tense," where he reports on emerging technologies, tech policy and digital culture. will oremus, what is reddian
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is case did it become a tool for the use of law enforcement. >> red zit an online message board who has just rocketed to popularity in the past two years it's a place where anybody can go if they just sign up and post a message about pretty much anything they want. messages are divided into pa bunch of differentpic res called subredditsnd in e course of the boston bombing velod a thred "findt users have boston bombers"decated to try to help the authorities do their job. first they were trying to find suspects, then they were trying to help locate where the suspect might be once the f.b.i. had circulated photos of them and they've gotten a few things right and a lot of things wrong in the process and it's stirring up controversy about their role. >> suarez: richard falkenrath, you can understand the appeal of enlisting hundreds of people to
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help the police but do you also lose a little control? in effect unleash peer-to-peer sleuthing with people talking to each other rather than to the cops? >> you lose more than a little bit of control and, frankly, i'm kept dhal this crowd source investigators on the i thatto are pretty soph they've done this fore and farreater amount ofata dh the crd source analysts were working with. and i think the statement yesterday from the f.b.i. special agent in charge of the investigation was really quite telling that he found this activity troublesome and led to an enormous amount of unhelpful speculation and misidentifications. >> suarez: in this case, two young fellows, salah adean and his friend yassin were identified on the covers of nationally published newspapers as major suspects here. will oremus, walk us through
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some of the blind alleys that this kind of investigative technique walked the investigation down. >> so, over the course of the past few days on reddit there has been one potential suspect after another who rises to prominence on the site and everyone starts delving into a certain photo to see if that could be the person. the format of reddit is such that anyone can post anything but everyone gets to vote on which post rises to the top of the page. the positive outcome of that is a that if there's something that's posted that valid, that's interesting that will go to the top of the page. everybody will see it and start investigating that lead. now, the down side is sometimes it's the most sensational thing that rises to the top of the page and it's not always right. so one of the first people they honed in on on this reddit was -- they called him blue robe guy. that was guy wearing a blue fleece. i guess robe sounded more sinister. this
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appeance, his location at the marathon finish line. of course he was not involved at all. two people th were investigated by the crowd on reddit ended up on the front page of t "new york post." they, too, were innocent. i don't think that's reddit's fault and maybe that's the "new york post's" fault but it does'm a fa size the way in which these public crowd source investigations can result in harm for people who happen to be mistakenly identified. >> suarez: but falkenrath, once the photos were released we had people searching their own photos and were able to fill in their whereabouts once they knew what they were looking for. in one notable case, a very sharp high quality h.d. photo of dzhokhar tsarnaev moving from the scene as other people are running from in the terror, he's walking to the corner and turning the corner and we see anymore very high fidelity which
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investigators in sose figurhere he went after the explosions. >> well, ray, recall that well before the authorities released the photographs of the two individuals they had requested that people in the vicinity of the explosion submit all their digital imagery to the f.b.i. for analysis. so one would certainly hope that the person who had that high definition photograph had supplied it to the f.b.i. well before he found it and decided to publicize the fact. >> suarez: are there new techniques and new machines that save place from having to go frame by frame through videos? leaf throu photographs that can look for a suspect very quickly through enormous data files? richard? >> yes, there are. something i have a fair bit of experience with in my time at the n.y.p.d.. but the new techniques to do analysis are having trouble keeping up with the massive increase in the amount of data that comes in the door in an investigation like this. so there is truly a phenomenal amount of digital imagery,
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unstructured digital imagery that comes in as a result of crowd source collection so the analysis technology, they're struggling to keep up with the collection technologies and that's one of the basic problems they have. there was there will still be an investigator going frame by frame through the key feeds for the purpose of identifying which one is the best and who really to zero in on. >> suarez: after investigations, will oremus, there are often what are called after-action assessments. should the tech world be doing one now about its role in helping uncover or not the two suspects in the marathon bombing case? >> oh, they are. they absolutely are. and the media world as well. there's a lot of debate about whether this type of crowd-sourced sleuthing by armchair investigators does more harm than good. i think's certainly potential for it to do good in some cases. there was a case a year or two ago where reddit users were able to help solve a hit-and-run accident. someone with great knowledge of cars was able to identify the
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taillight, identify the make and model of the car, helped police solve the crime. but this is a very different scale of crime and i think the reddit users are finding out that investigations are a lot harder than they might have he harmlg the w can be sever there so there'see s special election in th media, the tech world and reddit se. to their cdit a lot of reddit users are saying "are we really helping?" but it's a diverse community of people. there are tons of people on the site. some people are saying hey, let's get out of this business and leave it to professionals. no, look, we may have gotten it wrong here but maybe we'll get it right next time. >> suarez: to be continued. will oremus of slandh of you for joining us. >> brown: we'll continue our coverage of developments in this breaking story throughout the evening, online, where you can watch a live stream of events as they occur from boston. and still ahead, shields and brooks with their thoughts on boston and more.
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but first, the other news of the day. here's hari sreenivasan. >> sreenivasan: the search for survivors from a fertilizer plant explosion persisted today in the small town of west, texas with word 60 people are still unaccounted for.sech and rese w thd outr remains of buildings consumed by wednesday night's explosion. until this morning, the death toll was unknown, but texas public safety officer jason reyes gave this figure. >> it is with a heavy heart that i can confirm 12 individuals have been recovered from the fertilizer plant explosion. the deceased have been taken to the dallas forensics lab for proper identification. to date there have been approximately 200 reported injuries. >> sreenivasan: reyes added that he couldn't say how many of the dead were first responders. >> a bomb just went off in here. it's pretty bad. we got a lot of firemen down. >> sreenivasan: one was identified as captain kenneth harris, a 30-year veteran of the dallas fire department who was off duty but livr weed neato and
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authorities have now searched and cleared 150 buildings and have another 25 to examine. fedmeanal investigators started collecting debris and other evidence to find a cause. ave frhave relatives down the road and you cant get in touch with them so that's why i'm here, just to see if they're even alive. >> sreenivasan: this afternoon texas senators john cornyn and ted cruz toured the devastation. cornyn said there are still 60 people missing. >> we know that there are a number of people unaccounted for and right now authorities are going to the hospitals and making sure they know where poeple are so they're in the process, there are a number of confirmed dead but there are others unaccounted for. and there are injured, more than 150 so we're in the process of making that determination. >> sreenivasan: meanwhile, the first remembrances of the victs gan laas g
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authorities have also said there is still no sign of a criminal connection in the plant explosion. it's been a violent 24 hours in iraq as the country prepares to hold provincial elections on saturday. mortar fire and bombs targeted two groups of worshippers north of baghdad as they were leaving friday prayers. nine people died and 29 others were injured. overnight, a suicide bombing at a popular cafe in the capital killed 36 people and wounded dozens more. today, the families and friends of the deceased came to a hospital morgue to collect their loved ones' bodies. former pakistani president pervez musharraf is now in police custody after being taking refuge at his home on the outskirts of islamabad. the ex-military rur is facing son charges for firing senior judges while he was in power. musharraf was arrested a day after fleeing the high court in a black s.u.v. as angry lawyers yelled after him, calling him a traitor. musharraf insists his arrest is politically motivated. serbia and its former province of kosovo reached a tentative deal today to normalize
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relations. the pact-- brokered by the european union-- aimed to settle the status of kosovo's serbian minority, which does not recognize the ethnic albanian leadership. kosovo declared independence from serbia in 2008. a deal could clear the way for serbia to start negotiations toward e.u. membership. nicholas maduro was sworn in today as venezuela's new president. he was confirmed the winner in sunday's election by a slim majority, after which his main challenger, an c audit. maduro's supporters wore red and lined the streets of caracas leading to the national assembly where he took the oath of office. the crowds also honored hugo chavez, who hand-picked maduro as his successor before he died. the federal aviation administration issued a statement today clearing all boeing 787 dreamliners to fly again by next week. the planes have been grounded for more than three months because of a battery system prone to overheating. boeing redesigned the system and the f.a.a. approved the changes.
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the grounding has cost boeing an estimated $600 million. the boy scouts of america said today they will ask their national council to vote on a proposal that would permit gay boy scouts but continue to ban gay leaders. the organization, which has long banned gays, said the new direction is based on survey results from the scouting community. th is scheduled for late oday, the dow jones industrial ara g10 pnts tt 14,547. the nasdaq rose more than 39 points to close at 3,206. for the week, the dow lost 2%. the nasdaq fell 2.7%. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to jeff. >> brown: and we close the week and this most unusual day of news with the analysis of shields and brooks, syndicated columnist mark shields and "new york times" columnist david brooks. mark, i used the word "extraordinary" at the top of the program. a major americ c in lockdown. your thoughts on seeing that. >> well, i mean, it's obviously
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reminiscent of 9/11 and a reminder of what this sort of a national trauma in particular a regional trauma can do to a nation. i mean, we followed new york the attack on new york and the attack on washington which obviously were far greater in volume and suffering but by going into two wars and changing the way we live in this country. and you can see right now, i mean willingness of people to accept boston becoming a ghost town, basically. >> brown: but 9/11 was a while ago. have we forgotten that sense in our own cities? >> i don't think so judging by the reaction. when this is all over i want to see a debate from people who know what they're talking about about the wisdom of shutting down a region to chase one 19-year-old. i mean, it could be an overreaction. we'll wait and see. t s ofhen you go to places that attacks-- israel and other places--neethings theyll you ise
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and the importance of so say in israel during the intifada days when there would be an attack in a cafe, the cafe would be open the next day. so the idea was to keep society normal. not to minimize what's happened but to keep society as normal as possible and so i'm not sure we're achieving that with the media coverage and shutting down entirely. >> brown: but that's what you mean about the potential impact on the larger psyche. >> you want to be a resilient society and to be a resilient society you want as much normalcy as possible. >> brown: what do you think about that? >> well, resilience in the people of boston, praise from the president, the governor, the mayor and just about everybody tells, especially at the ceremony at the holy cross cathedral on thursday andvirtuah spoken about the pluck, the mettle, the intestinal fortitude, the toughness of the people of boston so at some point it becomes a little bit
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self-fulfilling. if everybody thinks we are, we're going to be and we are, damn it, we'll show them. i think that seems to be the very unrepresentative, unscientific sample that hazard has appeared at least before television cameras and microphones. >> brown: but at a ceremony, the one you mentioned, the president speaks, we've had these before, this is when we look for a certain kind of leadership, right? >> right. and i think all the leaders have done a nice job, deval patrick, the president, the mayor. you can be proud of people stepping up. the other thing that strikes me is you go goughro these phases of a type of violence, we don't know what motivated these people. you've had a lot of violent act by loaners, by people who have slipped through the cracks of society, school shootings, these two, other things down the road so once upon a time it was anarchists then it was bigger the rohr organizations. this might be atomized lonely dissending individuals so that's a different kind of society and
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producing a different kind of nut job. >> brown: we've talked about what we know and most of what we don't know. is it too early to talk about political consequences? it wasn't too early for some to bring it up already today talking about potential impact for example, on immigration laws. >> i think we had ann colter saying it's too a bad suspect number one won't be able to be legalize bid marco rubio. obviously in a sarcastic observation, a knock on rubio for his leadership on the immigration bill. i don't think there's any question that it -- boston had a negative impact on the vote on the manchin-toomey compromise on gun control until the senate and i think the fear and legitimate fear on the part of those in political office is that it will
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embolden candidates like steve king in iowa who's kind of xenophobic, anti-immigrant candidate to challenge for the republican senate nomination and move the die and the debate and depending upon what the effect is on the senate, where there seems to be strong support, not deep but strong -- wide support for the immigration bill, the impact on the house. if you're scared stiff as a house republican, you're going to be challenged in a primary. if the primary determines who wins those districts. this could make them more timid in supporting immigration. >> i'm a little bit dubious. these people have been here a while. they're american schools, reasonably assimilated judging by their twitter feeds and i think the immigration debate is going to take over itself. i've become much more sossimistic, even in the senate. - but i doubt this will play into that. that will be a big separate debate over a series of weeks or
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months. >> brown: what about gun control? byny measure that was the political story of the week, the defeat in the senate, including the push for stronger background checks. what happened? >> yeah, i was surprised. >> brown: you were? >> yeah. at least some sort of weak background checks and what we've learned was there's long been a structure in our gun control laws and when sandy hook happened we think the underlying political structure is changed but it wasn't changed. if you're in red state-- whether you're a democrat or republican-- there's no advantage to voting for it. mostly because the people who oppose guns vote on that issue. the people who oppose gun control vote on that issue. the people who support the gun control measures tend not to vote on this issue so the political calculus in those states is still all against reform and the political mobilization never reached those areas. >> brown: so it was all politics? >> i think there were real changes. we talk about cowardice and -- but there was some real courage.
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i mean, there were a lot of senators, western senator, mark udal, michael bennett, tom udal, new mexico, colorado, ron widen and historically john qwester in montana, tim johnson in south dakota, states that historically had not been sort of a writeoff. you didn't vote for gun control because the gun culture community was too strong there. the hunting community. so ron brown and seen thest hadd thisergi as a national issue. there were 21 states where both senators voted for the manchin-toomey gun control amendment and they represented 261 electoral votes. there were 17 states where both senators vote against it. they're smaller, more rural and less popular states and to the degree that marco rubio for
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example, if he would be the republican nominee in 2016 he'd have trouble in the suburbs of philadelphia. he'd have trouble in winning women's votes, having been strongly against gun control. so the possibly of it being a national issue. the other mistake that was made in my judgment that nobody i think has addressed publicly is that the democrat have a golden opportunity. once 13 republicans said they would lead a filibuster. that's when they should have thwn down the gauntlet and said "okay, you want to have a fill buster? let's have a filibuster on background checks and we'll go day and night and put the face on the opposition to gun control on that issue." and i think you would have won it. i really. do but obviously senator reid and the democratic leadership made a different decision. >> brown: the president came out very angry at the white house. he said 90% of americans favor the background checks, the majority of senators favor it. he was saying democracy has been foiled. sounds like he's trying to play
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to what mark's talking about to build some kind of outrage. >> i think he was genuinely angry. he was generally moved by what happened. li si k sso much time with thefa nuinelsy gry buct orture of our pli that when you have a dedicated minority going against a broad coalition defending a compromise piece of legislation that none of them are entirely happy with, that dedicated minority often beats the broad and fragile majority and i think that's what happened here and that may happen with immigration. >> but when the president said he still wants to come back with this, senator manchin says it still has some life. families vow to keep it alive. are they wrong? >> manchin and toomey was a step. >> it was a step. >> and you have to start there and make sure it's not a cultural issue, the east coast and west coast telling the country what to do. you have to start with the red states and go outward. >> suarez: brown brup you're suggesting it may have life? >> manchin toomeyook
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risk politically. i think, jeff, that this is an issue and it's fascinating to me. we've seen same-sex marriage emerge as just a bare majority issue in the past three months. and the flood of people running to support it. i mean, heidi hide camp, the new democrat from north carolina heitkamp who voted against the background checks. i'm willing to bet in north dakota there are more people who are for a background check than who are for same-sex marriage and i think it cams back to what david has said. there isn't on the pro-gun control side a political infrastructure. there aren't volunteers in the l.g.b.t. community-- lesbian gay bisexual transgender community-- there's political activity. there are those willing to get involved in the campaign. but there isn't that and there is on the anti-gun side and that's what has m from the pro-gun control side is
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really shock troops and people willing to volunteer in the field and right checks. >> brown: just in our last 45 seconds, today you were writing how guns and immigration sort of will show us the future of politics, particularly on the right. >> immigration is the big one. if the republicans do not -- and this is a bitterly divided party on immigration, growing more divided. the opposition growing in the republican ranks, if they shoot down this immigration reform that will really doom the party. that's the big one year. >> brown: tat's bigger than guns? >> yes. >> brown: david brooks, mark shields, thanks very much. >> thank you, jeff. >> suarez: again, the major developments of the day: authorities lifted a lockdown of the boston metropolitan area this evening, after police spent the day on a manhunt for the surviving suspect in monday's bombings. he remains at large and state police said he fled on foot niotr his brother was killed in police. and, the death toll in the texas
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fertilizer plant explosion grew to 14, with 200 others wounded. >> brown: online, lessons we can learn from misinterpreting economic data. hari sreenivasan has more. >> sreenivasan: a new report finds that previous theories about how too much government debt would stall economic growth were wildly overstated. that's on making sense. and on art beat, a new film documents the story of ukranian jews who hid in underground caves during world war two. all that and more is on our website newshour.pbs.org. ray? >> suarez: and that's the "newshour" for tonight. on monday, we'll bring you the latest on the marathon bombings. plus, arguments at the supreme court. i'm ray suarez. >> brown: and i'm jeffrey brown "washington week" can be seen later this evening on most pbs stations. we'll see you online where you can continue to follow breaking news from boston. and we'll be here again monday evening. have a nice weekend. thank you for joining us. good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by:
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offering specialized solutions and capital to help you meet your growth objectives. we offer expertise and tailored solutions for small businesses and major corporations. what can we do for you? >>ica. world newsbbc america. reporting from washington, i am katty kay. they have endured. residents of boston have been warned not to go outside as police search for the suspect in the boston marathon bombing. the father of the boys defenses son --

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